I didn't have a question - my comments were because someone posted it to the Monero subreddit - "ShadowCash Ring Signature Whitepaper released -- Any comments?"

And as pookielax31 surmised, I am part of the Monero Core Team. I am not here to advertise anything any more than you are here trying to be a spokesman for Julian Assange. It's just a profile signature on a forum.

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding Longenecker or everyone else is. My initial comments were made after reviewing 1 of the 2 commits to the "anon" branch, the 2nd commit didn't exist at the time. It would be impossible for me to have foreknowledge as to what would be contained in the commit, and any idiot can look at the first commit and also observe that it didn't contain generateRingSignature(), nor were the verification functions wired up. I'm certainly not "busted" or "fudding", and if that's anyone's takeaway from me making a clear observation then they need to seriously revisit that persecution complex of theirs.

Yep, that's correct. I made the first two comments with respect to commit 94bfb03. Thereafter (the following day) commit 317b9b1 was made and pushed to the repo, and subsequently pointed out to me. I reviewed that, and thus updated that thread with the additional comment.

Honestly, I don't really care to get into a this-coin-that-coin debate. Kudos to the dev(s) for actually putting in effort to implement a very simplified ring signature system. If they add bad utxo blacklisting and also provide a suitable fix for the chain reaction privacy reveal outlined in Monero Research Lab's MRL-0001 research bulletin they are well on their way to implementing one half of the two core privacy principles espoused in Monero's cryptography (that is to say, they would then be able to provide a measure of cryptographic untraceability, but not cryptographic unlinkability).

Remember that the OP reflects the current status of the code. Once the tail emission is set and committed to master the OP will be updated to reflect that:)

I agree with this 100%. There's a lot of thinking that's being done, particularly by the MRL guys, to see if we can provide these convenience layers on top of a solid foundation.

I enjoy this debate, and obviously I don't know the future - maybe the decisions we've made are unsubstantiated right now, and maybe they're wrong, so of course I stand to be completely wrong and only find out in future:-P

That said, I do think infinite tail emission changes things substantially - once we hit minsubsidy it makes trading based on a microcosmic timeline (ie. demand for the Monero that is emitted over, say, a month) vs. the view a speculator would take of a deflationary currency where supply is fixed. You, for instance, indicated you want to own "0.1% of all XMR". Tail emission makes this a moving target - you'd only ever be able to fulfil that for a snapshot in time (ie. "of all XMR currently emitted").

I'm also not arguing that there will be no speculation, clearly that's never going to be the case. However, I do think that most speculators don't have a very high risk tolerance, and thus there will be enough of a fundamental difference (vis-à-vis Monero's slightly inflationary nature when contrasted with Bitcoin's deflationary nature) that there will be less "hoarding" for the sole purpose of becoming overnight millionaires.

I'm not discounting them at all - I'm merely saying that a rise in XMR's value should come directly from utility, and not directly from speculators + fudging numbers to create artificial demand. That's not to say that speculators are at all bad, it's just that they should be along for the ride instead of being the ones solely responsible for the ride!

Maybe I must put it differently: if genuine demand for Bitcoin by "ordinary" people (ie. not speculators) was the sole price driver, what would Bitcoin's price be? $1 - $3 maybe? (I have no idea, I'm thumb-sucking here) Either way, the gap between that and the current price means that speculators are propping the balance of the price up. What we are hoping to achieve with Monero (in particular with the infinite tail emission) is to reduce that gap so that the price of Monero in the far future more closely reflects the actual demand than any artificial demand. Who knows if we're on the right path or not, but I do sincerely believe it's a better path than just cloning Bitcoin;)

Very true:) I think the point I'm trying to make is this: all controversy aside, people like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs didn't make money through good fortune alone, nor by buying some rare token and hoping it appreciates. They made money by creating and innovating, and they did so despite any currency fluctuations or movements. Monero is merely a vehicle that happens to provide advantages over Bitcoin in the area of privacy (and hopefully in future in the area of usability), but the stuff that will make Monero useful comes from external projects that are created by people truly wanting to change the world.

I don't disagree that you need incentive.

So, tell me then, what is it about the US Dollar's price and "investability" that makes people build, create, and innovate products that are denominated in USD?

You miss the point.

We don't want to exactly duplicate the dynamics of fiat. Freicoin already tried that, to a large degree, with their demurrage effort. Who uses Freicoin today? No, the point is not to preclude making "great fortunes" with Monero, it's just that the process of making such fortunes should not be as simple as buying $500 worth and hoping for the best. It should require genuine, honest effort and work...or it should at the very least require you to be a fairly intelligent criminal...just like with cash:-P

Edit: just to add that I also don't disagree with the share model (where you own shares in companies that make money) but again, you should be purchasing shares in a company because you have done due diligence. Owning some cryptocurrency should not be the same process, even though it pretty much is at the moment.

To add to what I said earlier, I'd like to point to this excellent comment from junkit33 I just discovered on Reddit -


I say: let Monero be priced on our actual usefulness and not merely on speculation.

We haven't changed the emission curve. Per the OP: "Actual number of atomic units is M = 264 - 1. A minimum subsidy may be implemented in the future with <1% annual inflation to preserve mining incentives."

Since we're definitely moving ahead with that minimum subsidy in future, it'll basically just get to a point where block reward is, say, 0.3 XMR, and that will be the block reward indefinitely (actual numbers still need to be graphed and we need to evaluate the most appropriate minimum subsidy, but it's honestly not something we have to rush out the gate).

We've said this before, and it bears repeating: Monero is not an "investment". In fact, we are actively working against the price "naturally" rising merely as a result of us fudging some numbers. You see, Bitcoin's price rose because of an artificial scarcity created by a fixed number of coins and a diminishing block reward. Now that's all well and good, but the sudden creation of quite a bit of wealth for some early adopters has had several interesting consequences. The most interesting of them is the Coattail Riding Effect. That is to say: the vast majority of altcoins that are released nowadays, and this is especially true for proof-of-stake coins, exist solely to try and ride Bitcoin's coattails, making the group of early adopters in that altcoin tremendously wealthy.

With Monero we have opted not to repeat that process, and instead of simply running with a deflationary currency and hoping for some form of profit, we have instead aimed to aggressively move in the opposite direction and make it slightly inflationary. This means that Monero is NEVER going to become incredibly valuable overnight, and it's not going to make insta-millionaires out of anyone. It means that its value is going to come entirely from utility and usefulness, and that hoarding it for 6 months or a year or maybe even 2 years is not going to make you rich.

If you want Monero to grow in value and you want to be part of advancing technology...well, be prepared for the long haul, be prepared to ignore the price, and make a concerted effort to build something for the Monero economy. The core team will endeavour to make things progressively easier for end users and for integrators / merchants / automation systems, but that should not prevent you from spending your spare time making Monero useful and usable through your own projects. It's the reason we have the External Projects section in the Missive now:)

If we become a community of builders, of creators, of innovators in things beyond the core of Monero, we will truly have something remarkable and revolutionary on our hands.

Hello my gracious friends. I come hoping that fortune favours you on this fine day, and also bearing news of our online playable version. Rapid progress is being made, and I would like to briefly show off the main city screen -


You will note the quadrat highlighted in the second image - lots are highlighted as you mouse over them, allowing you to select a lot and get information on it (this is currently at a quadrat level at the moment).

More details to come, and as soon as we have a few more pieces in place we'll open it up as a testbed for everyone to mess around and break it before we make the permanent switch over to it.

The first block reward reduction happened on block 2.

Genesis block reward: 17.592169267200
Block 2 block reward: 17.592152490000

It decreases every block (with an additional penalty that could affect it on a per-block basis if that block is > 20% from the block size median at that time).

Hi all - MyMonero is back up. The emergency maintenance was a situation out of our control, but as you correctly surmised there is nothing we could do to steal funds (we never know or control your spend key).

With regards to future functionality, allowing an import of short-key style wallets into simplewallet, that is definitely something MyMonero will work on and then submit to the Monero Project as a pull request.

Sorry about that, we pushed the latest updates to prod and had to immediately roll it back because it broke in prod, but didn't roll back the API server as well. All fixed now:)

My friends, all night I have tossed and turned as sleep eluded me, and deep, dark visions swirled before my eyes, the likes of which I could not understand. I was standing at the bottom of a large mountain, snow all around me. A voice from behind me shouted "climb!" but I could not, for despite me having climbed to the top of many mountains I had neither the clothing nor the supplies. "Climb!" the voice came again, louder and more insistent, but still I did not. A third time still the voice boomed - "climb!" - and yet I could not turn, I could not speak back. The skies grew darker, the snow heavier. It appeared my fate was at hand in this vision. Then suddenly, as if by some benevolence previously unknown, I saw a young goat, the choice one of the flock. It drew up to me, and on its back I saw attached a leather satchel, and I found it filled with clothing and hiking equipment and fresh bread still warm and gently wrapped. Together the young goat and I ascended the mountain, and the sky began to clear.

Troubled, I went this morning to the Very Ancient Big Spring, and gazed deep into its waters. It was as if the gentle lapping of its nearly still waters against the bank cleared my head, and I knew and understood this vision. I am nothing without my goat, my protégé Baron sXpher, and by myself I could not ascend the mountain and stand atop it. It is for that reason that I hereby formally nominate Baron sXpher to the Town Council, to stand for and on behalf of himself and for and on behalf of me. I have confidence that he will despatch his duties with care and diligence, as I have taught him. I have confidence this nomination will further be met with the approval of His Majesty the King.

I'm intuiting here, but I suspect that a malicious open node to which you connect to all the time can build up a history of outputs from your broadcast tx's, and couple that with a determination of your "true" signature on inputs, to effectively deduce as much information as knowing your view key would reveal. The only useful advantage then would be that you can stop using a remote daemon and it won't know your transactions in perpetuity.

We've had remote daemon support from the beginning (the daemon and wallet are separated in the CryptoNote reference code already), but it's not light at all - it still downloads the full blockchain and does full verification and viewkey scans on received blocks/tx's.